Washington (Platts)--28Jan2008

US Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Monday accused the coal industry
of lying about the effect the fuel is having on the environment and climate
change, adding that coal is "ruining the world."

"I think the coal companies should be upfront with the American people
that coal is one of the things that is ruining our world," the Nevada Democrat
said in a teleconference with reporters in advance of President Bush's State
of the Union address Monday evening. It has been rumored that Bush will say
something about clean coal technologies as a follow-up to last year's speech
when he mentioned climate change for the first time in a State of the Union
speech.

"The coal industry around the country is spending tens of millions of
dollars to give false and misleading information to people around the country
saying 'all we want to do is have clean coal. Why won't they let us do the
clean coal,'" Reid said. "My answer to that is it doesn't exist. There is no
clean coal technology. There's cleaner coal, but there's no clean coal
technology."

Reid said that until zero-emissions coal fired power generation is
available, something he said won't likely happen for another 20 years, "we
should just back off" and look to cleaner energy like natural gas and
renewables. These produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions, he said.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi struck a more conciliatory tone than Reid, but
agreed that coal poses tremendous problems. "I don't think that the industry
is a monolith," she said. Pelosi, a California Democrat, said she has had
talks with coal industry officials and members of Congress from coal-mining
districts about developing technologies to capture and store carbon dioxide
emissions from power plants.

Pelosi said it would take "several billion dollars" to research carbon
capture and storage and that existing efforts are not enough. "Coal exists. It
will be there a century at least. It is cheap," she said.

Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, a Democrat who is giving her party's
State of the Union rebuttal this evening, said a national greenhouse gas cap
is needed because states are moving on their own already. She spoke of
"engaging a national discussion on global warming" and that on this issue
"Americans and the majority of Congress are ready to go."

--Alexander Duncan, alexander_duncan@platts.com